Speko

Category

Developer Tools

Launched

July 29, 2026

Stage

Undisclosed

Pricing

paid

Website

speko.ai

The English leaderboard is lying to your voice agent. Not maliciously, but structurally. Most speech model comparisons are run on English benchmarks, and the model that tops that table is treated as the default for every language your users speak. Speko, a Y Combinator backed startup that calls itself "OpenRouter for Voice," starts from a different premise: the right speech model depends on the language, the objective, and the price. Its pitch is that every speech model should be benchmarked language by language and wired into one API — and that the routing decision should be made from those measurements, not from a vendor's glossy chart. The company's website makes the problem concrete with a simple observation: "11 of 23 are only measured in English. Their rank in any other language is unknown — including the model that sits at the top of the English table." And then the kicker: "4 different models win across 9 languages. No single model is best everywhere." That's the entire argument for Speko's existence in two lines. If you're building a voice agent for Arabic speakers, the English champion might be a poor choice, but you'd never know from the marketing.